Is there a way I can boost Nextcloud to improve it as a collaborative photos album? The features for photos are nice and work modestly well, but I am having a hard time convincing the family to use Nextcloud to store their pictures. They are spoilt by pixel-perfect social media platforms, which I am trying to unhook them off. I don’t know what it is exactly, if it is that Nexcloud works a bit cranky at times, or if it is that it has a bit of an unpolished look, but I was wondering if there are any third-party apps out there that could improve the user experience for sharing pictures. I do feel that there is a bit of a mental barrier when it comes to organizing the pictures, I need to store them in folders, the same as I do when I save them on my computer, but I would feel more comfortable organizing them in collections, the same as Itunes does with songs. In fact, I would not mind putting them all in the same folder and using Nexctloud to visualize the pictures, as long as it had some sort of way to create albums without putting them in folders. I thought about achieving this by using tags, but they are not really meant for this purpose.
I am opening up a different topic here, but I think that the real issue is that to navigate through folders you have to enter and exit the folder, which is a bit uncomfortable. I miss is having a side panel navigation to seamlessly switch from album to album. Perhaps it is just a matter of fact of adding a folder hierarchy view in the Photos side panel, so when you click “Your folders” you can navigate through all of your folders from the side panel itself.
It lacks way behind of NextCloud a standalone, robust backend (file management / server / etc) but when it comes to Media albums, it is just way better and snappier than NextCloud’s default photo app.
NextCloud isn’t actually built for just photos and videos. Its a very powerful enterprise tool, which happens to have this neat feature or photo and media management.
Beauty of Open Source and Self-Hosting is this freedom of individual need based custom solutions. So I use combination of both.
I am actually an user who is on the same boat as you are. Since primary need of my NextCloud is to replace Google Photos and Google Drive. Here is an overview of my setup,
NextCloud (Snap) Server → Back end (user / storage managemen)
NextCloud andorid / ios apps → For auto uploading / backup the media from client devices to their respective NextCloud acc.
PhotoPrism (Docker) → Backend (separate docker container for individual NextCloud users)
PhotoPrism webapp → on client devices for easy organizing their media as it feels very intuitive and similar to what people are used to with Google Photos or other social platforms.
Now, best thing about this setup is that you don’t have to force anyone to use it by replacing their other backup / storage options… It can run parallel to their existing method of storage / backup. So let them keep on using and comparing and choose later on.
@jsvaliente
I don’t understand why many users have problems with folders and directory structures. But maybe it’s because nowadays people don’t even want to understand the structure of data storage.
If you have images you always have to structure them somehow in a hierarchy. I don’t know what should speak against folders. In modern tools like WhatsApp, for example, I tend not to have an overview. I don’t know how the users can find the pictures again after months or years.
Maybe you can use Group folders. Also every user can share his/her folders.
I have got thousands of photos, hundreds of folders in maybe twenty years. I wouldn’t know how to map that on a social platform. Does anyone know how you would access it on WhatsApp? E.g. christmas 2009? And what about backup/restore or migrate to another cloud?
Thank you all for your replies. None of them was exactly what I was looking for but they all did the trick in some sort of way. Anyhow, I recently found this Reddit post about a new app for pictures that seems to be what I was looking for:
I have not tested it yet, I am currently sorting other problems I have with Nextcloud, but I will try to not forget to leave a comment if I get to try it.
PS: I apologize for the late reply, I deactivated the notifications and did not know I had received the replies.
